The Real Job Creators: Everyday Americans, Not the 1%
Consumers, not the wealthy, are the key to an economic rebound, and GOP austerity is shackling them.
May 4, 2012
AlterNet.org (http://www.alternet.org/economy/155288/the_real_job_creators:_everyday_americans,_not_the _1/)

Republicans have made it official: “The wealthy” must be called “the job creators” in any debate about tax policy. Democrats are playing their own word games: Centrists insist the 2012 campaign shouldn’t focus on “income inequality,” or whether the worst concentration of riches since the Great Depression might have to do with what Paul Krugman has taken to calling the Lesser Depression. “Income inequality” is a downer, the centrists say; better to talk about “growth” and “prosperity.”

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that growth and prosperity are threatened by the declining share of income going to the non-wealthy over the last 35 years.

Friday’s disappointing jobs report confirms that “the job creators” should be fired, since they only created 115,000 new jobs in April, which isn’t even enough to employ new entrants to the workforce. And while the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.2 to 8.1 percent, that’s only because more unemployed people gave up and left the labor market entirely. Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom (Mr. Etch-A-Sketch) blames President Obama, and he even pretends his candidate cares that “people are so discouraged they are dropping out of the workforce all together.”

Let’s get one thing straight: Even with this anemic recovery, the economy under Obama has replaced all of the jobs lost under the Bush administration. NBC’s Chuck Todd deserves kudos for noting to Fehrnstrom Friday that British austerity policies have sent that nation into a double-dip recession – and that Mitt Romney supports the same policies. Fehrnstrom performed the standard Romney pivot – whatever you’re asked, insist on talking about the U.S. economy only – brushing off Todd’s question about how Romney would improve the economy more than Obama has, with his “cut, cap and balance” austerity policies that have failed elsewhere.

But the stalling economy is not good news for Obama-Biden 2012. I’ve said before that I think the debate over whether the Democrats’ campaign message should highlight income inequality vs. growth, opportunity and prosperity presents a false choice: The president is a skilled enough communicator to explain how they’re linked. But he’s really got to find a way to turn around the debate and make clear that consumers, not the wealthy, are the real “job creators.” Until we figure out a way to get people employed and almost as important, get incomes rising again (for more than just the folks at the top) our economic troubles will stay with us.

Paul Krugman is making the rounds talking about his new book “End This Depression Now!” which puts in one place the arguments he’s been making since at least 2009: The Lesser Depression is more a political problem, at this point, than an economic problem, since the GOP is implacably opposed to the government spending that has traditionally goosed the economy out of its doldrums. Right on time, McCain economic advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin is out with a piece that doesn’t challenge Krugman by name but argues that all the stimulus of the last decade – from Bush tax cuts through the 2009 Recovery Act and mini-stims like the payroll tax cut – haven’t helped the economy, because this hasn’t been a “demand recession” but a structural “asset-driven recession,” due to the bursting of first the dot-com bubble and then the much more serious housing sector and banking collapse.

I’m not qualified to get into the weeds with either of these two economists, but we should remember two things about the ’80s recovery that Holtz-Eakin says was a strong one. First, few Republicans ever acknowledge that Ronald Reagan became a stealth military Keynesian mid-term, letting Paul Volcker loosen up the money supply while presiding over a defense buildup that was also a stimulus package. The Reagan years also saw the beginning of household debt beginning to balloon, while household savings declined – a result of the flattening of wages taking place especially for the working class. Holtz-Eakin ignores the extent to which the banking collapse itself took demand out of the economy, and money out of consumers’ hands – money they’d been taking out of their homes or their credit cards, at least partly because they weren’t getting it in their paychecks.

More krappynomix terminology and nomenclature and jargon and wordage and verbage by krappynomicysts -- all baloney.
Or praps not all baloney, but it might az well be baloney, koz none of it addresses the solution.
The usofa kan run, but it karnt hide.
Theusofaizgowandowninate.
mac.

eg8r

05-07-2012, 07:54 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Real Job Creators: Everyday Americans, Not the 1%
</div></div>The real job creators are the small businesses but the looney left on the board have tried with little success to prove otherwise. They still think it is the 1%.

eg8r

Gayle in MD

05-07-2012, 09:11 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: cushioncrawler</div><div class="ubbcode-body">More krappynomix terminology and nomenclature and jargon and wordage and verbage by krappynomicysts -- all baloney.
Or praps not all baloney, but it might az well be baloney, koz none of it addresses the solution.
The usofa kan run, but it karnt hide.
Theusofaizgowandowninate.
mac. </div></div>

Gee Mac, cheer down. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif

G.

DiabloViejo

05-08-2012, 02:05 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: eg8r</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Real Job Creators: Everyday Americans, Not the 1%
</div></div>The real job creators are the small businesses but the looney left on the board have tried with little success to prove otherwise. They still think it is the 1%.

eg8r </div></div>

The real job creators are the customers (the American People). I don't give a good rat's azz how well run a business is...if they don't have customers and / or the customers can't afford the goods or services offered..that business is in a world of sh*t. You know that, and I know that, and anyone with even a smidgen of brains knows it. So stop with the BS already!

Gayle in MD

05-08-2012, 04:25 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: eg8r</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The Real Job Creators: Everyday Americans, Not the 1%
</div></div>The real job creators are the small businesses but the looney left on the board have tried with little success to prove otherwise. They still think it is the 1%.

eg8r </div></div>

No, the left on the board have not tried to prove that Job Creators are the top one percent.

Just the opposite.

You don't even make any sense half the time.

It is Republicans who continually try to say that the top one percent, are the job creators.

It is we on the left, who contually say they are absurd, and lying their a$$es off.

The wealthy top one percent are not the main job creators, as we have stated all along, and because Republicans keep firing middle class and lower middle class workers, we do not have enough middle class, and lower middle class consumers to buy the products that small businesses want to sell.

Another reversal of reality, in order to twist the truth, and skew the thread?

Seems sometimes you get so enthused about throwing out another insult, that you don't even take the time to write something that makes any sense at all.

G.

eg8r

05-08-2012, 05:53 PM

LOL, you cannot even remember what you said yesterday. I am not going to argue with you about it any further. If you think you are right use the search and prove it. I know you are wrong and I have no intention of drudging through your garbage proving you wrong yet again.

eg8r

eg8r

05-08-2012, 05:57 PM

Do you feel like a big boy now that you get to use those "grown up words"? It looks juvenile. Besides that, customers do not create, that is the reason why they are called consumers. I am well aware of the role each group plays in the economy but the fact is customers do not create anything other than demand and demand cannot be there if the product was not there in the first place, which it cannot be there unless someone with some money fronted a business and hired people to perform the job to create that good or service to be sold.

eg8r

Gayle in MD

05-08-2012, 06:58 PM

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: eg8r</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Do you feel like a big boy now that you get to use those "grown up words"? It looks juvenile. Besides that, customers do not create, that is the reason why they are called consumers. I am well aware of the role each group plays in the economy but the fact is customers do not create anything other than demand and demand cannot be there if the product was not there in the first place, which it cannot be there unless someone with some money fronted a business and hired people to perform the job to create that good or service to be sold.